Moderation is a basic life skill.

When moderation is mentioned, a lot of people act like it is some sort of magical superpower that some people are just born with, and you couldn't possibly expect them to ever practice moderation because they weren't lucky enough to be born that way. But the fact is that it's one of a great many learned skills that is necessary to getting along in a modern civilized technological society.

People have to learn how to walk, swim, ride a bike, reading and writing, basic math skills, polite skills, table manners, how to drive a car, how to use a toilet, basic hygeine, how to tie shoes, put on their own clothes, wait in line, take turns, share, oh and also, how to practice moderation. These are all basic life skills that everyone should have and preferably should be learned as a child.

Gluttony, moderation, and deprivation all lie on a spectrum that looks like this:


Gluttony is what happens when one is only concerned with short-term happiness and ignores the long-term consequences of their choices. Deprivation is what happens when one is too concerned with long-term consequences and never lets themselves enjoy things in the moment.

What is moderation? It is the balance of both long-term and short-term. Moderation is finding that point where you can enjoy yourself in the moment in a way that is sustainable, so that you are not destroying your future ability to keep doing the same. Moderation is sustainable behavior. It is grown-up, responsible behavior.

If you consider it in terms of money, gluttony would be spending your entire paycheck the moment you get it on pointless shiny things and maxing out any credit cards you can get, and deprivation would be putting all of your paycheck into a savings account that you can never touch for the rest of your life. As you can see, somewhere in the middle there is a happy point where you can enjoy spending some of the money you make AND do so without going broke. The same can be done with food.

Something moderation has in common with all other learned skills is that people make mistakes and have failures while learning them. But if they keep trying they can eventually learn from their mistakes and their success. That is when it becomes useful and the previous efforts pay off. Nobody just says "I'm going to practice moderation from now on" and then goes on without ever making mistakes, any more than one would say, "I choose to instantly become a saxophone virtuoso."

The reason to learn moderation is that the alternatives both lead to unhappiness. Gluttony also typically leads to poor health and early death. Deprivation also leads to unhappiness, or bad health in the extreme as well. And even if you 'succeed' at depriving yourself of the things you enjoy, what have you won? What is your prize? Prolonged misery? And the stress of depriving yourself also can lead to health problems, so there's not even "but at least I won't have any health problems" as a consolation prize.

As you can see on the chart, the best combination of happiness, and good health, and sustainability lies not on either ridiculous end of the spectrum of eating everything ever, or living on a strict diet of kale chips and twigs, but on finding the balance between 1- all the foods you enjoy, and 2- all the foods that give your body the fuel and nourishment it needs. You can do both, and it's worth learning how to do it.

Now I understand that many people come to the point of being overweight because they have other problems they need to work on as well. And also that many people are not fortunate enough to have been taught moderation as a child. But it is important, for your long term health and happiness, to understand that moderation is something you can learn, and that it's well worth the effort it takes to do so. :happy: